Dr. Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad Win 2018 Nobel Peace Prizes

The prize recognizes Mukwege and Murad's efforts to stop the use of rape as a weapon of war.

This combination created on October 5, 2018 of file pictures shows Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege (L, on November 26, 2014 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg) and Nadia Murad, public advocate for the Yazidi community in Iraq and survivor of sexual enslavement by the Islamic State jihadists (on December 13, 2016 at the European parliament in Strasbourg). Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege and Yazidi campaigner Nadia Murad won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize on October 5, 2018 for their work in fighting sexual violence in conflicts around the world. (Photo by FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP/Getty Images)

Congolese gynecological surgeon Dr. Denis Mukwege and Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad will each receive a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace award honored both Mukwege and Murad for their efforts to combat the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.

Mukwege has long operated a small hospital above Bukavu in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Throughout years and years of war in the region, Dr. Mukwege has treated a population that has been victim to rape by militias, government soldiers, and foreign armies. Mukwege has been a very public advocate for women during wartime, and survived an assassination attempt in 2012.

Murad, who is 25 years old, was abducted with thousands of other women during the Islamic State’s attack on the Yazidi minority of northern Iraq and raped repeatedly by Islamic State soldiers. After Murad’s escape from capture, she bravely agreed to be identified by name by reporters, and has campaigned endlessly and internationally for the recognition of the Islamic State’s ethnic cleansing of the Yazidi people and of the ongoing practice of rape as a tool of war.

“We want to send out a message of awareness that women, who constitute half of the population in most communities, actually are used as a weapon of war, and that they need protection and that the perpetrators have to be prosecuted and held responsible for their actions,” Nobel Committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said in a statement, according to The New York Times.